Concepts at Work(English, Hardcover, Ish-Shalom Piki)

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Concepts at Work(English, Hardcover, Ish-Shalom Piki) is written by Ish-Shalom Piki and published by The University of Michigan Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 047213244X (ISBN 10) and 9780472132447 (ISBN 13).

Concepts are socially and linguistically constructed and used for multiple purposes, such as justifying war in the name of democracy; or, using the idea of democracy to resist Western intervention and influence. In this fascinating and novel edited collection, Piki Ish-Shalom and his team of authors interrogate the "conceptions of concepts" in international relations. Using theoretical frameworks from Gramsci and Bourdieu, among others, the authors show that not interrogating the meaning of the language we use to talk about international relations obscures the way we understand (or portray) IR. The authors examine self-determination, winning in war, avoidance of war, military design and reform agenda, vagueness in political discourse, "blue economy," friendship, and finally, the very idea of the "international community" itself. As the author asserts, Bourdieu's sociology of field and Gramsci's political theory combined "offer us a sociopolitical theory of relations of power and domination concealed by doxic knowledge and taken-for-granted rules, in which essential contested concepts and political-serving conceptions can and do play an important role."